BY THE time its extension ends in March this year, the pilot run of the motorcycle ride-hailing services shall have taken a total of nine months. In the meantime, two more operators have been added to join the group of motorcycle taxi operators. One of them announced its presence in Cebu the other day.
The pilot run is supposed to be for the purpose of gathering data to help Congress craft a law that will legitimize the motorcycle taxi as a common carrier. I do not know what facts and figures the Department of Transportation Technical Working Group (TWG) needs that would take nine months to collect. I just hope that they include the motorcycle riders’ ability and willingness to obey traffic rules and regulations.
Most of us know the answer but unfortunately, what we know is not what matters. So I challenge the TWG to field its people in the streets for even less than a week so they can form a conclusion of their own on something that is already very obvious to us. Try Vicente Urgello St. which has been declared one-way since a road improvement project started. If they can observe less than 50 motorcycles counterflowing during a 10-hour period, then it must have been a lean day.
They are not all Angkas or habal-habal or Grab Food, of course, but majority of them are, judging by the shirts that they wear. Habal-habal drivers do not have a uniform but eight out of 10, you will be able to spot them if you have been using the same road for some time.
I am for the legalization of the motorcycle ride-hailing operations. There is a public need for them and there are families who depend on the business for food on the table, shelter above their heads and the education of their children, among others. But public safety cannot be compromised. How do you balance the two interests?
More than seven months have passed since the TWG launched the pilot run. If they have not found the answer yet, we’re damned.
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A recent study ranked Lapu-Lapu City and Cebu City among the top destination points in the country. With the travel restrictions brought about by the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, tourist-dependent businesses in these two cities have taken a hit.
But they are not the only victims. I spoke to a top hospital official yesterday and he was groaning over the high cost of maintaining facilities devoted solely to the so-called persons under investigation (PUI) in relation to the virus that has killed more than 1,000 already in China alone.
First of all, he said, the hospitals do not have the isolation rooms that can cope with the coronavirus so they either have to build a new one or remodel some of their existing rooms. Then they have to train and adjust the salaries of hospital personnel who will be assigned to handle the PUIs.
But it is the cost of the Personal Protective Equipment that is particularly staggering. A PPE (the protective suit that the doctor, nurse and other hospital personnel wears when he enters the room of a PUI) costs P1,500 each, he said. A PPE can be worn only once. After each visit, it is discarded and disposed properly in accordance with Department of Health protocol.
Since three shifts of medical and other staff will be visiting a patient daily, not less than 14 PPEs will have to be used and discarded every day for a single patient. Multiply that by the unit cost of P1,500 and you have P21,000 per patient per day for the PPE alone.
The Department of Health protocol calls for the quarantine/hospitalization of a PUI for at least 14 days which is the estimated incubation period of the virus. Thus, by the time he is discharged, the PPE cost shall have ramped up to P294,000.
Ordinarily, this and all other costs are charged to the patient but what if he cannot afford it? How long can a hospital absorb the loss without imperiling its own operations?
In Singapore, the government stockpiled PPEs to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Maybe, our own government should consider doing something similar.